Hi Nicholas, I listen to every week on the ABC and I love it. I have a query for you is IGS investment a scam. I have been contacted by them and a bit weary.
If it’s the same IGS I’m think of then keep away.
They are a gold seller who like to get you to buy large amounts of gold at under the market rates.
They even sneakily advertise in World of Warcraft by spelling out their website in dead bodies.
Nice analogy for how these guys work isn’t it?
Of course, if it’s NOT the gold company it could be the energy company who have been accused of scamming customers
hello Nicholas, had a phone from someone about viruses on computer, asking me to connect to their website www.teamviewer.com and said he was from Software Support of PC, wasn’t too convinced about what he was saying. Have you heard anything about them?
The short answer is Yes.
There has been, in Australia, a recent rash of con artists phoning people claiming to be from Microsoft. They claim that they have (via the magic of the internet) been made aware of a problem on your computer.
They then charge you for software and support you do not need.
The teamviewer call you received is another version of this swindle.
An age old scam, The Rocks In The Box has been resurrected by a con man in the UK.
The swindler offered to sell two men two laptops and three iphones for £1,000. The men checked out the gear and agreed to buy the merchandise.
It was only when they were far away did they realize he had swapped the bag of electronics for a bag of rocks.
Legend tells use the scam goes back to medieval times when swindlers would swap a bag of pig for a bag of cat. Hence the saying, the let the cat out of the bag. However, there is no real evidence that this is anything but a bit of fairy tale etymology.
Not to be confused with fairy tale entymology
If you want to see how a professional does, watch the video below.
I just received this email from Loretta at ABC Statewide Drive
Someone rang up talk back a couple of days ago and said his elderly mother was sucked in to the water cooler scam.. He said he was able to change her bank accounts etc and she only lost around $100, because he’d heard you talking about the scam on the show. He said to thank-you!
The water cooler/filter scam is very popular at the moment.
Good News: You receive a phone call from a telemarketer telling you that you have won a water cooler.
Bad News: You have to pay for the filters for the filters that go in it.
Good News: The filters are very cheap.
Bad News: While charging your credit card for the filters they also charge you over $100 for the postage.
Bad News: They don’t tell you about this.
Bad News: They keep sending you filters each month and keep charging your credit card.
Bad News: Because you agreed to the initial charges it’s very hard to get the money back
Bad News: Your name gets added to a list of people who might fall for the scam.
Hi Nicholas, I listen to you each week on the abc and really enjoy the segment. We recieved a letter today containing a 5 cent piece. It is from a man called David Rhodes of Perth Western Australia. The letter is about a 3 step plan to get rich!
Your first step is to send $10.00 to a person listed 1st on a mailing list containing 5 names and addresses.
You then add your name to the mailing address and send out 200 letters with a five cent piece on it. Cutting a loong story short you send out all the letters and in 60 days you get $70000.00!. Would love to hear if you have heard of this practice.
We can send you the letter if you like and lastly is it a scam as i suspect?
Simon Humphrey
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Hi Simon-
The David Rhodes chain letter has been doing the rounds for many years.
It is a scam. Chain letters are considered pyrimid schemes in Australia. It is illegal to even take part in one.
The math just does work out.
If you send it to 200 people who send it to 200 and so on, by the time your name reaches the top it will be sent to more people than the population of the world. That’s 320,000,000,000 people supposedly sending you cash.
I’ve never heard of anyone making money from it.
All best
Nicholas
PS - That’s actually not true. The ONLY chain letter I’ve ever heard to be successful is the Underpants Letter. You send a pair of underpants to the person at the top of the list and, in two months, you receive underpants in the mail! Everyone I know who has taken part has received at least two pair of underpants.
Over the weekend I drove up to Macorna to perform a show for the local football club.
Each year, they bring up someone a bit different to entertain the locals and get a bit of extra support for the club. Since there isn’t much of township and most of the residents are spread over farms and properties, the club is a focal point for the community.
On the drive up I was listening to the science show and a discussion on The Dunning-Kruger effect, a pyschological phenemonan that shows that, in the words of Bertrand Russel, “the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Dunning and Kruger asked a group of students to predict how well they had performed on a simple test. Those who thought they had done well, tended to perform badly whereas those who were more critical of their performance, tended to be underestimating their abilities.
The Dunning Kruger effect could also be applied to gullibility.
Many people I speak to about scams can not believe how the victim’s of fraud and swindles could be so gullible, so stupid. Yet it is this over confidence in their own ability to spot a scam that will, eventually, trip them up.
It’s very easy to pass judgement on others with the benefit of hindsight (fun too) but most victims of scams are intelligent people who got a little too careless and a little too cocky for their own good.
On the radio this week, the big talking point was the new casino that might be coming soon to Mildura. 250 people protested the plan today and callers were concerned that the only people to make money would be the government and the casino.
Two people who have made money from casinos were a London duo who hacked in the roulette computer at an English casino. The computers allowed people to make remote bets on the wheel without having to talk to croupiers. They duo reprogrammed the machine to always pay off!
In happier, we discussed a Queensland woman who managed to get back some of the $40,000 she was scammed by a Nigerian student who posed as an English widower. The student was sentenced to 19 years and the government managed to retrieve some of the cash.
